August Sunrise
by twinkles77
Summary: The day Sirius runs away from home, set in the summer just before his fifth year. Please read and review!


Title: 005 – August Sunrise

Description: The day Sirius runs away from home. Just before fifth year starts.

Every cell in his body began to scream as soon as he regained consciousness. His hair was matted to his forehead with blood that dripped onto his eyelashes as he slowly lifted them, his lip raw and swollen.

Sirius was lying on the floor of his father's study, surrounded by lush beige carpet stained red in sticky patches. Vague memories of the fight flowed back into his mind and threatened to engulf him but he pushed them away, closing his eyes and half wishing to fall back into his earlier state of blissful oblivion. But there was no going back.

He barely suppressed a cry as he gingerly eased into a sitting position, trying in his stupor to gouge the extent of the damage. Instinctively, he felt in his pocket for his wand but found it empty. Grimacing, Sirius reached up to the edge of the desk for support and pulled himself up to begin his sluggish journey up to his bedroom.

Every room and hall was pitch black; he wondered dimly what time it was and how long he'd been lying there. The pounding in his head increased sharply as he used the banisters to draw himself up the stairs, and midway he had to fight to stop his knees from giving out.

After the stairs, everything passed in a haze of darkness. Sirius closed the door behind him, not even bothering to lock the door, and picked up his wand from the dresser before collapsing onto his bed. He ran its tip over the marks on his skin, murmuring the few numbing charms he knew over the wounds. The pain slowly lessened and receded, leaving him with nothing but the heavy sensation of shame in the pit of his stomach at once again being beaten into submission.

The story was always the same. These scenes had occurred so often by now that they no longer seemed distinct, but melded together in his mind to form a circular course of events, with a beginning long forgotten and no end in sight. The last time he could remember being beaten was the summer before fourth year, when he had given his parents the slip while shopping for school supplies in Diagon Alley. They had found him trying to smoke cigarette butts with some Muggle boys. His mother had made him smoke an entire cigarette in front of her, which had gotten him dizzy and on the verge of puking before his father took him into the study to "fix the problem." Now, it was because someone in the family had found out that he had been stealing goblets and other trinkets stamped with the Black crest to sell at school and make his own money. Soon enough they would find out about the tattoo of the Gryffindor crest on his back and that one of his best friends was a werewolf, and then...he knew this would seem like nothing. Even the fact that he only spent at most one month a year at home wasn't enough to avoid that.

Sirius pushed himself further up onto the bed, moving aside the green and silver sheets his mother insisted on having with distaste. His indefinite gray eyes stared out of the window unseeingly as he waited patiently for his body to heal and scarlet beads dripped onto the covers, glistening in the early morning light.

The external sky was in the first stages of an August sunrise; cold and a stormy purple, but with unmistakable traces of purest gold that were the last vestiges of summer. At Hogwarts, he would never caught a glimpse unless it was because he still hadn't gone to bed from the night before, and even then it was always from the outside. Sirius Black would never be content to sit in the dark and watch the riotous morning hues burst into brilliance without him; he was a person that nature itself couldn't leave behind.

The face reflected in the windowpane wasn't that person. The sunken, empty eyes didn't belong to him, much less the hollowed cheeks and downturned mouth. He had really tried hard so hard to stay that person, but this alternate world didn't let people like that in. More to the point, people like that never wanted to come here. Sirius had been waiting all summer long to go back to being that person, thinking to himself that "there's only so many more days." As he mulled it over now, he understood how stupid it was. It was like telling yourself there are only so many more days until you get to live.

The reckless fizz of energy started up in his veins again as the first golden rays rose over the somber walls. He problem wasn't – had never been – him; now that it had been identified, it had to be solved. Sirius stood up and walked into the middle of the room, surveying it. The vast majority of his things were still stored in his school trunk, save for a few books and toiletries that he scooped up and threw inside. Then he went over the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer with only a minor protest from his muscles, taking out a box of bandages and the like. The blood had mostly dried now; the wounds were still raw, but they would no longer bleed. Looking in the mirror, he dabbed at his lip and other spots of blood on his face, cleaning it off. Bandages wrapped and sealed themselves around his bruised and cut knuckles. He strode over to the bathroom and turned the tap to wash the dried blood off his face and hair, making sure to preen it in the natural Sirius manner.

He bandaged the cut on his head, and then made his way back to the bed but stopped short. He grabbed his wand and placed it back in his pocket, for a moment bitterly regretting that he had forgotten to do so earlier. Then, in a sudden move, he ripped all the Slytherin-themed covers off his bed, leaving them strewn in a mess on the floor. Next came the overhangs, the Slytherin banner over the headrest. Slowly, systematically, the whole room was demolished.

Sirius slung his bookbag over his shoulder and stared around him in open satisfaction. Beneath the ripped wallpaper hung many of his own Gryffindor banners, attached to the wall with a Permanent Sticking Charm. Pictures of him and his friends that had been covered up for years were visible again, as were a myriad of posters of scantily clad Muggle girls. A small smirk graced his face before he turned on his heel and headed straight out of the door without a backwards look.

Warm breath unpleasantly tickled the back of his neck as he cautiously shut the door behind him. Sirius's wand hand plunged once again into his pocket as he whipped around with an unprecedented resolve to blast whoever it was out of his way, when he found himself nose-to-nose with his brother.

Regulus stood in nothing but his dressing-gown, his eyes wide and fearful like Sirius hadn't seen them in years. The illuminated wand tip was inches away from his neck, but he still stood stock-still as if he hadn't budged.

"What _are _you doing, O brother of mine?" He asked sardonically, but with a trace of the old, childishly frightened tone Sirius hadn't heard in ages. Without warning, the big brother instincts kicked in. But what were you supposed to do when you yourself were causing the distress?

He hoisted his backpack higher on his shoulder and wheeled the trunk noiselessly forward in reply. Regulus's mouth gaped, then pursed.

"Stop me," Sirius whispered venomously before he could say anything. "I dare you." They held each other's eyes for impossibly long seconds, both waiting for a concession. _They were all always waiting for a concession, _Sirius thought bitterly. He braced himself for a shout, or Regulus to pull out from the depths of his dressing-gown his brand-new wand and shove it in his face, but the silence remained undisturbed except by the faint, sleepy twittering of a few early birds outside.

The tension built, then broke as Sirius took the wand away and once again the darkness swallowed them both. He turned around and started down the steps, ears pricked for a sign of the slightest movement behind him. None came, even as he reached the landing and made his careful way down the stairs. Only when his quick strides led him to the very threshold of the double mahogany doors did Sirius turn around.

He knew the darkness was still too thick to penetrate, but he could see his brother standing there more clearly than ever – both hands on the banister, knuckles stark white with a face to match. Uninvited memories of countless other nights just like this rushed back to him, clouding his mind and rooting his feet to the spot. Times long past blipped and flashed around the corner of his mind – the day he came back at two in the morning after staying out all night with James, to find the whole family still awake and his father waiting with a belt – the next year, when he came home just before dinner and they knew he had been out with a Muggle girl – as a child, when he had used his magical powers to entertain Muggle children in the neighborhood rather than for the Dark purposes the rest of his family encouraged. It had always been the same situation, but only now did he realize that he wasn't the only one hurt by it.

Without thinking, Sirius raised his wand again. A blinding flash of light, the crash of broken glass, and suddenly the curtains covering the large, arched window at the end of the corridor flew open, and the window itself was nothing but millions of shards of stained glass littering the floor. Sunlight, now true and strong, poured into every crevice as he flung open the main door and chaos ensued as every other in the house did the same.

"GO!" Sirius yelled, but there was no time to look back – he almost tripped over his trunk and caught a brief glimpse of his father, enraged, barreling out of his chamber with his mother on his heels – his cousins, hastily fastening their dressing-gowns as they came out and looked in wonder upon the scene – and suddenly they all disappeared behind those great mahogany doors, and as they rapidly shrank smaller and smaller there was nothing ahead of him but the sun rising over the rooftops and the Knight Bus looming closer and closer.

The endless night could be over, for those who chose to end it. He knew Narcissa would shrink away and settle back in her own comforting gloom, and Bellatrix would be too haughty follow in his footsteps. But he couldn't extinguish the small hope that Regulus would proudly walk into the light just as he had done, couldn't suppress the certainty that he knew that that was why Sirius did it.

But as he paid his fare on the bus and settled in his seat, no lithe, robed figure came sprinting out of the garden. His father emerged from the main doors and shouted something he could no longer hear; his mother tore at her tangled hair and screamed something with popping eyes behind him; his cousins, aunt, and uncle hovered in the background, unsure what to do; but there was no Regulus.

The driver announced that they were about to take off and the bus lurched back, but Sirius barely noticed the change amidst the regret he already felt for his baby brother. But even through the disappointment of failure, he felt vaguely that if he had to see his brother a last time before leaving that house, he was glad it was with clarity while the darkness reigned, rather than blindly in the light of this consequential August sunrise.

Endnote: Yes, I know, it's a little different from the rest of my stuff. Don't worry though I'm not like going emo or anything, I just wanted to try out something new for once. I don't think it's my best but I honestly don't know how to make it any better, what did you guys think? Suggestions always welcome but please keep it nice!


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